Parents play an important role in structuring young children's cognitive development. The cognitive opportunities parents provide for their young children may be influenced by patterns of parent- child interaction, however. Characteristics of the child, such as social conduct, may lead to differences in parental behaviors that may, in turn, affect parent-child interaction, thereby regulating development. It is far from clear, however, whether parents and children differentially contribute to and direct cognitive interactions. The proposed research attempts to understand the relationship of parent-child interaction patterns to young children's cognitive functioning by studying how social interaction with a child's own parent, relative to interacting with another child's parent, during a cognitive problem solving task may differ for young children who exhibit conduct disturbances and those who do not, and whether the guidance provided by adults for these two groups of children relates to different cognitive outcomes on later solitary tasks for the child. Parent-child interaction of 48 mother-child dyads which have been matched into 24 pairs composed of a dyad with a mother and a noncompliant child and a dyad with a mother and a normally functioning child will participate in a series of laboratory problem solving tasks involving planning. Children will be 4 1/2 - 5 1/2 years of age and be identified as noncompliant or normally functioning on a series of convergent, multiple agent measures during a preliminary laboratory visit. The guidance provided by adults for these two groups of children, as well as the cognitive performance of the children during collaboration and on later individual tasks will be compared. The main hypothesis is that parents of noncompliant children, relative to parents of normal children, will exhibit more low level or task specific cognitive directives, rather than strategic or representational information, when problem solving with their difficult children. It is expected that the evocative nature of noncompliance will provoke a similar response from parents of normal children when they collaborate with these difficult children. Focusing on specific aspects of a task allows for closer surveillance and control of the child's behavior, which may benefit the adult in the short run. But in the long run, young children with a history of low level cognitive interactions with adults may acquire fewer cognitive skills than children who do not exhibit conduct disturbances. The consistency of parental style in guiding cognitive interaction will also be studied.